Making Women Visible: Women's Human Rights Activism in the 1970s

This paper asks the question of how women’s rights became human rights. It explores the roots of the intersections between the women’s rights and human rights movements in the 1970s, discussing both the physical ties between the movements, like people transferring organizations, correspondence between them or shared sites of activism, and analyzing the transformation and evolution of ideas and definitions concerning women’s rights and human rights. Specifically, this paper looks at the work of two feminist organizations concerning human rights abuses in Latin America: the US chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the Dutch organization ‘Women, Church and the Developing World’ (VKW).